Chapter Five.
Farewell to Fanad.
After that, life went uneventfully for a time with Tim and me. Now that the cabin was empty father visited us seldom. His voyages took him longer than before, and we had a shrewd guess that they were not all in search of fish; for little enough of that he brought home. Young as we boys were we knew better than to ask him questions. Only when he showed us his pocket full of French coin, or carried up by night a keg of spirits that had never been brewed in a lawful distillery, or piloted some foreign-looking craft after dark into one of the quiet creeks along the coast, or spent an evening in confidential talk with his honour and other less reputable characters, we guessed he was embarked on a business of no little risk, which might land him some fine day, with a file of marines to take care of him, in Derry Jail.
For all that, I would fain have taken to the sea with him; for every day I longed more for the open life of a sailor, and chafed at the shackles of my landsman’s fate. What made it worse was that one day, sorely against Tim’s will, my father ordered him to get ready for the sea, leaving me, who would have given my eyes for the chance, not only disappointed, but brotherless and alone in the world.
But I must tell you how this great change in our fortunes came to pass.
It was about a year after my mother’s death when, one dark night, as father and we two sat round the peat fire in the cabin, father telling us queer stories about the Frenchmen, and icebergs in the Atlantic, and races with the king’s cruisers, that the door opened suddenly, and a woman I had never seen before looked in.
“Biddy McQuilkin, as I’m a sinner!” said my father, taking the pipe from his lips, and looking, I thought, not altogether pleased. But he got up, as a gentleman should.
“Arrah, Mike, you may well wonder! I hardly know myself at all, at all. And there’s the boys. My! but it’s myself’s glad to see the pretty darlints.” And she gave us each a hug and a kiss.
Somehow or other I did not at first take kindly to Biddy McQuilkin. She was a stout woman of about mother’s age, with little twinkling eyes that seemed to look not quite straight, and gave her face, otherwise comely enough, rather a sly expression. And I guessed when she made so much of us that it was perhaps less on our account than on my father’s.